Anita Brookner

Nightmare in Dublin

Caroline Wallace, a journalist specialising in book reviews and the occasional travel piece, is asked, or rather told, to go to Dublin to interview Desmond FitzMaurice, a once famous playwright and foreign correspondent, in order to revive interest in his now forgotten work.

Caroline Wallace, a journalist specialising in book reviews and the occasional travel piece, is asked, or rather told, to go to Dublin to interview Desmond FitzMaurice, a once famous playwright and foreign correspondent, in order to revive interest in his now forgotten work. Fitzmaurice is nearly 90, and so there is no time to be lost. She will listen to his reminiscences and with luck fashion a major article. There is no reason why she should not do this. All she leaves in London is a house in Notting Hill which she shares with her partner of ten years who has never suggested marriage. She is over 40, so time here is also of the essence. One day she will give up her job and write a proper book. This assignment, she thinks, will be her last.

If all this sounds familiar that is because it is. Many novels and short stories have been fashioned around this theme. If Caroline had been more of a reader she would have encountered it more than once. Nevertheless, as a professional, and one who intends her future book to be a survey of 20th-century fiction, she is resigned to seeing it through. She knows nothing of Desmond FitzMaurice apart from his name, which is no longer news. She reckons she could fit it all in to a couple of days and then get back to Notting Hill.

The nightmare that awaits her in Dublin takes some time to unfold but is heralded by the rudeness of the woman — Mrs FitzMaurice — who seems disinclined to admit her to the house.

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